It seems that the conclusion at the moment is that any tanking piece with avoidance is just slightly better than a dps piece with crit, hence we should always choose non-crit DPS plate over any tanking plate. I skimmed through Theck's post on the four gear sets, but all the sets have avoidance on them.

Does that mean we still need an "healthy amount" of avoidance? If so, what is this healthy amount?

At the moment I choose whatever higher iLv non-crit gear I can lay my hands on, and reforge away from avoidance. But I'm afraid of having too little avoidance. (It also means I do LFR as ret to try and get more ret pieces, so I don't actually have a tanking set. Will only re-gem and re-forge when I have a full set.)

I was thinking about this today, the problem is it's hard to find a piece with just mastery and haste on it or even just mastery and hit/exp.

Also the 4 set Prot set bonus seem pretty decent to me, in the long run it might not be that beneficial but certainly at the moment unless some one can convince me otherwise I think we'll all want it. So that leaves us with getting a few pieces that are mastery-haste/hit/exp free with the notable exception of the shoulders which are just dandy itemization wise.

Gearing isn't always a smooth process, at this stage in the expansion come avoidance gear is just such a bigger upgrade in Stamina and strength that you can ignore the loss in secondary stats.

But I'm sitting at 615K raid buffed at the moment so I feel I can be a bit more choosey at this point. I was trying to construct a BiS list for normal (opened so far)/normal (all open) heroic etc but it's a lot of work and I'm not entirely sure I'm correct with some of my choices.

Personally given the choice I'd swap all dodge and parry on my gear for hit/exp/haste/mast.Though as has already been pointed out we'll end up with some avoidance from prot tier pieces plus a large chunk of parry from strength.The other thing to think about is unless you have no plate melee in your raid team it's most likely going to be better for the raid if you pass haste items to the dps first, as we have avoidance options for almost all slots so no point in taking a dpsers only choice then de'ing the dodge item the next week.

Daishan"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it." -- Terry Pratchett

Yeah, and for people who predominately run LFR as prot, DPS gear is hard to get, except for maybe VP gear.

I was going to put together a sort of "complete list" of gear like we had for 4.x on the forum, but then I thought someone must have already done it, and I've been putting it off until know. Perhaps my original question becomes moot once I get to know the loot available to us.

I am wondering if we should stop referring to non-crit DPS plate as that. And the same with calling gear with dodge or parry on tanking gear. Reading the frustration thread it seems some people are not allowed to roll on not-crit DPS plate as that is how the gear is seen in the general WoW population. As DPS gear.

Welp, Warriors and DK's aren't too hot on haste. They'll focus on hit/exp/mastery/avoidance, which have always been accepted as tanking stats.We're the odd duck out there with haste being so strong, kind of like Warriors used to sometimes need Agility Leather/Mail before the Plate specialization.

When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.

Mozen wrote:So it has been established that mastery and haste are better than avoidance.

In that case, why would anybody, ever, use any piece of tanking gear? Any DPS plate without crit will be superior to any "tanking gear" which would most certainly have avoidance.

Not strictly true. The big thing is to get hit/exp capped. Stacking anything after that point helps reduce spikes, even avoidance. Haste and mastery are a little better than avoidance in that regard, but not by a huge margin.

For example, consider the following two leg armors: Kovok's Riven Legguards, Legguards of the Unscathed. The first is expertise/dodge with reduced strength, the second is haste/mastery with normal strength levels. The first is hands-down the better item. Why? It has a large chunk of expertise, and the extra dodge itemization from the reduced strength allows you to reforge into a large chunk of hit. You get more of the stats you want most (hit/exp) out of the "tanking" item in this case.

However, no in that the tanking plate heirlooms are arguably better than the dps - I believe it's a choice between parry + dodge vs crit + crit, and crit is not a stat that helps us defensively. What I did when leveling a plate character was equip the crit gear for soloing and the tank gear for dungeons.

I don't know how well the new heirlooms will scale to 85 and won't rush to buy them (you can get OP MoP blues for L80+ if you really want to). If I ever return to my horde pala benched at L40, I doubt I could resist the new heirloom shield, however.